A brief-yet-ongoing journal of all things Carmi. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll reach for your mouse to click back to Google. But you'll be intrigued. And you'll feel compelled to return following your next bowl of oatmeal. With brown sugar. And milk.

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Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Old and yellowed

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Deerfield Beach, FL, December 2010

About this photo: We're still sharing sign-themed pictures as part of this week's Thematic. New theme goes live tomorrow (Wednesday) night, but for now we're still in a sign-ish kinda mood. Are you? We sure hope so. Click here if you are.

Once upon a time, before the virtual replaced the physical, bulletin boards like this could be found in front of every apartment building, grocery store and community center from here to Poughkeepsie.

Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. These things still exists in some places. Like condo developments in South Florida that cater to the greying edge of the demographic bell curve. And the tired old grocery store where I sometimes shop. As long as the tired old grocery store remains open, that is.

There's a sadness to scenes like this that starts and ends with the light. Yellowish and sickly, eerily reminiscent of the tone of the opening scene of Joe vs. the Volcano. It was an otherwise forgettable movie, perhaps best known as an early Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan collaboration before their collaborations actually found a real audience. But that scene, where the legions of workers slog themselves through the grey murk of the most depressing of all mornings, stands in my mind as one of the most brilliantly packaged pieces of cinematic atmosphere I've ever seen (link here.)*

Which is my way of saying this bulletin board evoked the same kind of sadness. People looking for something. Sales, connections, help. Little snippets of ripped paper suggesting, perhaps overly hopefully, that some of them found what they were looking for. Others, apparently, are still waiting.

Your turn: Who uses this bulletin board? If you had to pick one person, what would his/her story be?

--* An additional scene - when he arrives inside the office - is similarly depressing, and similarly great cinematography. Link here

Funny, I still see these. Frequent themes would be stay at home moms wanting to babysit, and yard work folk. Our boards at work are covered up in so much propaganda and deadlines, it is not fun to look at and I frequently ignore it. However...lonely hearts and cars for sale, houses for rent and humanity on the boards is what I like to see.Just sayin' love your blog.